


Edge

by Eatsscissors



Category: The Eagle (2011)
Genre: M/M, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-08
Updated: 2011-03-08
Packaged: 2017-10-16 04:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatsscissors/pseuds/Eatsscissors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally written from the Eagle kink-meme: Esca shaves Marcus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Edge

It is the first three days after the surgeon visits again that are the worst. He sinks beneath the depths of a fever second only to the one that had claimed him on the ride back to Calleva, and he stays there only to surface for quick and desperate grabs of air accompanied by the feel of hands on his body. They change the bandages on his leg, the linens on the bed, and retreat again each time before Marcus manages more than the quick, life-saving gasp, though he remembers that he had spoken of shame. Marcus knew who it was each time all the same. Esca's sullen countenance makes an impression; he echoes about the rooms of Aquila's house long after he has left.

Marcus opens his eyes and watches long rays of sun sliding down the opposite wall. It is late, verging onto sunset, and he still feels as if he could slide back under and stay there for days more. It is the _idea_ of being helpless more than the current fact of it that makes Marcus keep his eyes open when they want to fall shut again and stay that way, forcing shaky arms beneath his body and pushing up. Even getting himself braced relatively upright against the wall is a laborious process which leaves him trembling, the wounded leg on fire, and the shadows much deeper and with less in the way of light to fight them. The house is quiet. All the same, Marcus knows that he is not alone.

He clears his throat and calls, "Esca." His voice sounds raspy to his own ears, and he can only hope that it did not ring so weak while he had been in the depths of his fever. Without so much as a scuff of his sandals over the stone, Esca appears in the doorway.

"Domine." Spoken with a stiff, formal respect that Aquila must have impressed upon him on his arrival, because he surely had not had it in the arena. It still doesn't reach his eyes. "You have need of me."

"Water," Marcus manages, because his mouth is dry enough to give him worry as to what he's been saying in his fevers, and rubs his hand over his face as Esca silently moves to fetch it. There's a sour stink of illness hanging about his body, in the long stubble on his face. It's too late to demand that old Stephanos draw water for him to truly sluice the filth from his body, and though Esca had proven himself almost shockingly strong in pinning Marcus down at the surgeon's behest, he's still too slight to do the full work of drawing water and dragging Marcus about when Marcus can barely manage to pull himself up on his arms. His face colors at the mere thought of trying: if he were willing to show so much weakness to a slave whose eyes still manage to say more and less than other that Marcus has ever encountered. There are still other measures that he can take, though, until morning and the chance to be fully clean again.

"And a blade," Marcus adds when Esca finally returns with the water, after being gone long enough to make Marcus wonder half-seriously if Esca hadn't been slipping some kind of poison into the cup, his father's blade and his promises of honor or not. The water is cool and sweet. "To shave." Esca dips his head very slightly and disappears again; he hasn't made a sound since his first greeting. He returns with a short blade of the kind that Sasticca uses to chop vegetables and skin small game—it might actually be one of the same knives, and Marcus is going to tell himself that a slave trained as a gladiator simply doesn't know how to work within a household yet—and a small circle of polished metal to serve as a mirror.

Esca hands Marcus the knife so quickly that Marcus wonders if he, too, is thinking of the knife that he had thrown at Marcus's feet in disgust, now tucked out of sight among Marcus's other things. He hesitates before settling lightly on the very edge of the bed and angling the mirror so that Marcus can work. As always, it's perched just on the edge of insolence, on crossing the line into what can't be excused as the reasoning of a savage Briton who has never served within a civilized household. Marcus glances up, but Esca's eyes give back no more than the dented and half-opaque mirror.

The light is not in his favor, but even at the first stroke Marcus knows that this will not end well. His hand is trembling with the strain of holding himself up against the wall while Esca had gone for the water and the blade, and the face that jerks and twists back at him in Esca's mirror is pale and drawn. It should be of little surprise that there's a sharp tug against the underside of his chin, followed by a bead of warmth running down his neck. Esca's eyes follow it into the hollow of Marcus's throat before they rise back to his face. He has probably seen more than his share of Roman throats laid open and bloody and longed to see many more, but his hand doesn't betray him in the slightest as he holds it out for Marcus to hand the knife over to him. A beat, and Marcus does, even as he's wondering if it will be the last of his mistakes. A probable-kitchen knife put to inventive use is a long way from a family dagger.

As if he can read Marcus's thoughts, Esca says, "It will not end well for me if you are found dead of a slit throat in the morning."

"You could hardly be blamed if I was the one to slit it," Marcus says. Occupied with setting the mirror on the bedside table as unneeded, Esca almost, but not quite, manages to hide his surprised glance over the curve of his arm. It's the most life that Marcus has seen in his eyes since the arena.

"That might not matter so much as you think," Esca returns, cautiously and as if he's not quite certain where the boundaries are, before he leans forward again with the blade in hand. It doesn't shake as it fits under Marcus's chin. Esca draws it forward in a smooth, practiced gesture; the blade scarcely catches even though Marcus knows from his own attempt that it is not fully sharp. With the light in the room caught in the hazy place between daylight and the need for a lamp, Esca has to lean close in order to see what he is doing. The eyes give little more away when they're this close than they do at a distance, but it's still more human contact that wasn't a relative or a surgeon wielding a blade than Marcus has had since the injury, and he barely controls a startle when Esca takes his chin in hand and turns his face to the side so that he can begin on the cheeks. Esca's eyes go back up to his.

"Did I cut you?"

"No." Marcus almost shakes his head before he remembers that it might not be wise with a blade already resting against his face. Esca studies him for a moment more before he goes back to what he had been doing, drawing the blade in strokes so smooth that Marcus hardly feels them. It is easy, when Esca is concentrating so closely, to believe that Esca is watching his mouth rather than merely his face, even easier than that to watch Esca's mouth in return. It didn't always been so stubborn, Marcus thinks. Esca repositions his hand to the base of Marcus's throat, lower lip disappearing between his teeth for a moment as he struggles to avoid nicking Marcus in the failing light. It becomes easier still to imagine what that hand might feel like exploring his throat in even darker light, how Esca might appear drawing his lip between his teeth under a midnight gleaming. What would need to be done to break his heavy and damnable silences. Marcus is very aware that the only thing separating them is a thin linen sheet tangled about his waist and Esca's short slave tunic.

Esca surely must feel Marcus's throat working up and down underneath his palm, but he says nothing, and his face does not change. He leans back a moment later so that Marcus can run his hand over his jaw and cheeks and feel how smooth a job Esca has managed, even with a stolen kitchen knife that probably saw the innards of a chicken earlier that day. It'll be much easier to sleep now and wait for a full bath in the morning.

"Thank you," Marcus says. Something shifts in Esca's face—startlement at being thanked, perhaps—before he lifts one of his shoulders into a shrug and stands to go.

"Do you require anything else of me?" It's perfectly polite, perfectly appropriate, and Marcus still feels as if he's being held up to an invisible standard and failing.

"No, you can go." Esca tips his head in acknowledgement and turns, only to pause in the doorway as Marcus calls out, "Have been trained as a barber?" It would deepen the mystery of Esca even further, if he were worth that much and yet had still wound up in a gladiator's ring.

The lengthening shadows don't even light Esca's eyes with their customary glimmer as he says, "No," and departs, leaving Marcus with the heavy awareness of the enemy's blade that he had had at his throat and a muddle of confusing sensations at the warmth of the hands that had wielded it.


End file.
